These tips, provided by other survivors and healthcare professionals, may ease your journey.

• Video: Exercise your mind and body to fend of Alzheimer's

• National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship
• Office of Cancer Survivorship
• Congenital Heart Information Network: C.H.I.N. is an international organization that provides reliable information, support services, and resources to families affected my congenital heart disease
• National Cancer Institute
• A National Action Plan for Cancer Survivorship: Advancing Public Health Strategies, 2004, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Translating Research into Cancer Care: Delivering on the Promise, The President's Cancer Panel: Annual Report for 2004-2005
• From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition, 2005, from the Institute of Medicine

• Make sure you have complete copies of your medical records, including your medical history; your cancer diagnosis; the type of surgery; chemotherapy regimens and dosages; and the number and location of radiation treatments, pathology, X-ray films, CT scans, PET scans, etc.; any complications encountered; and any late side effects your doctors and nurses think you might expect, such as risk factors from the types of treatments you had. This information will be invaluable if you change physicians, for example.
• Because of the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, you cannot be denied a loan or other financial service because of your cancer history. It is important to know your civil rights. On the federal level, basic information is available on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website at www.hhs.gov/ocr- the Office of Civil Rights. The eight regional offices listed can help you: a) understand the rules and regulations, and b) process your complaints. In addition, you should know the rules and regulations in your state. There often are policies in place to help cancer survivors deal with the economic challenges they may face, especially as concerns their job rights, health insurance claims, and protection of assets. Some states even have independent review boards to arbitrate claims at no cost to the cancer survivor.
• Advance directives allow you to plan for your care should the time come when you are unable to tell others the type of medical care you would like to have. While advance directives vary from state to state, they fall into three basic types:

The medical power of attorney is a legal document in which you give someone the authority to make healthcare decisions for you when you are no longer capable of making them yourself. Healthcare decisions involve any treatment, service, or procedure to maintain, diagnose, or treat your physical or mental condition. A medical power of attorney takes precedence over any other document, as far as healthcare decision making is concerned.

The living will communicates your wishes about specific types of life-sustaining medical care but takes effect only when you are in the terminal or irreversible phase of illness or injury.

The out-of-hospital do-not-resuscitate order is signed by a physician and allows a patient to refuse cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, when outside the hospital. If you do not have this order, healthcare providers, including ambulance personnel, may do everything medically possible to start your heart and help you breathe. Each state has its own requirements. These can be found at the following website: http://www.uslivingwillregistry.com/forms.shtm.